Once upon a time, in a land, far far away.......Olympus hit upon a niche camera
system that was much appreciated by those in the know. This culminated in the
OM 3Ti and Om4 Ti. It was a true camera system with macro and flash capability
and a high degree of compatibility across the board. The only thing it did not
have was Autofocus, but it suited me - and a great many others. I feel it was
the Leica of the SLR world. This was backed up by a good dealer network where
you could actually handle the product before you bought it.
Fast forward to today. Olympus are once again producing good cameras (micro
4/3). What has changed?
Very little compatibility between different cameras - let alone systems -
battery grips and batteries tend to be model specific. More importantly the
dealer network in the UK is non existent! Camera shops in the UK tend to stock
either Nikon or Canon and the only places you can get Olympus cameras are the
big box discount outlets. My local camera shop used to sell a fair amount of
Olympus kit for the size of the shop. Now it has been removed from the Olympus
preferred network because it does not order in enough volume. The result of
this is that I can buy from discount outlets cheaper than the shop can buy in
trade! So customers do not get the chance to handle cameras and go down the
Canon route instead. ( He is a Canon Dealership) It is all very sad!
I feel that unless the distribution issues are sorted (and this seems to be
mirrored in the US) Olympus will continue on it's downward spiral.
I can see more mergers of traditional camera and electronics firms, with some
big name players leaving the field altogether.
Regards
John Duggan,
Wales, UK
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